Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[Sarelth]

Currently "New" Trees just seem to be old trees laid out differently. The Savanah trees are jungle wood with a different layout for example. They do look alright though. Not sure if new wood types would be a good thing or not really.

[Thorium-232]

The amplified bit is just an option that has very little to do with the new terrain gen, and would probably be exceedingly simple to implement.

Just had a Morv moment reading that.

I've seen that they changed it from 36a to 36b already when I reloaded my amplified world, different biomes, different terrain, so I wouldn't put my money on it being finalized yet. We'll see how much more work will go into it until release, though.

The 36b release was a bugfix. Apparently the stained clay types that make up the stratification in the mesa biomes were not generating, leaving these crazy floating forests where their plateaus would be. 36b fixed that.

The Savanah trees are jungle wood with a different layout for example. They do look alright though.

Those trees were probably my favorite part. They really have a nice old-school 8 bit feel to them, I like how they handled it.

[FlowerChild]

Don't misinterpret that as me saying I *will* implement an amplified terrain type. I'm sure it would do terrible things to the balance of the mod, I just mean to say that it's really no big deal to put something like that in the game, yet it seems to be the thing that people are tripping the most over at present.

It's a novelty feature man, and really no big thing. Play with it in vanilla, get bored, move on.

[woeuntoyou]

Amplified terrain is just spammed mountains. It's just as boring as flatness everywhere... As for the trees, I heard they're just placeholders.

[Thorium-232]

Don't misinterpret that as me saying I *will* implement an amplified terrain type.

Wasn't thinking that, no. I should clarify it was more of a beat-skip really. You've been more than clear on your stance on terrain gen.

yet it seems to be the thing that people are tripping the most over at present.

I think this is because it harkens back to the crazy kind of landscapes you could get in ages past. I recall the very first map I played BTW on, it was a beach covered in huge eroded stone mountains. Had a very Thai/Chinese feel to it. Hands down my favorite map. Those days are gone though, and the shot of nostalgia the mode presents is pretty powerful stuff which is what people are picking up on. Fantastic/alien terrain adds a unique touch of eeriness to the world that really sets off that "stranger in a strange land" feel that I think Minecraft has been missing for a long time.

It's a novelty feature man, and really no big thing. Play with it in vanilla, get bored, move on.

I don't see it as much of a novelty as flatland is, really. Amped you could actually live in, as you can in large biomes. Just a different kind of world.

[Panda]

Just went over the some recent snapshots.... Mother fucking 13 or so new plat types.... Vanilla Minecraft has become a pansy, seriously its so pansy its frolicking in a fiend of useless flowers...

[Six]

Fantastic/alien terrain adds a unique touch of eeriness to the world that really sets off that "stranger in a strange land" feel that I think Minecraft has been missing for a long time.

This again highlights the temporary nature of 'fresh new' terrain gen. I remember back when the previous terrain generation first came out and people were posting all sorts of pictures of the amazing coves, caverns, ravines, crazy villages and everything else. The 'stranger in a strange land' feel only lasts until you get used to the new generation and then it'll be "Oh man, another ice spike biome?". To be fair it'll be a solid injection of 'new wonder' that will last people quite a while, but if you're bored with the underlying game, the terrain can only distract from that for so long.

[Husbag3]

Fantastic/alien terrain adds a unique touch of eeriness to the world that really sets off that "stranger in a strange land" feel that I think Minecraft has been missing for a long time.

This again highlights the temporary nature of 'fresh new' terrain gen. I remember back when the previous terrain generation first came out and people were posting all sorts of pictures of the amazing coves, caverns, ravines, crazy villages and everything else. The 'stranger in a strange land' feel only lasts until you get used to the new generation and then it'll be "Oh man, another ice spike biome?". To be fair it'll be a solid injection of 'new wonder' that will last people quite a while, but if you're bored with the underlying game, the terrain can only distract from that for so long.

That's exactly how jungle biomes were for me, they looked really nice and the larger trees were a rather radical change but it very quickly became "Oh damn, I hope I don't have to walk through that." Maybe with the greater number of new biomes the interest is maintained for a little longer but I fear some of them may become a bit of a non feature, similarly to mushroom biomes.

[maxsi]

After a day of refactoring portal code, this is now possible. http://t.co/GtWfYd4x02

https://twitter.com/Dinnerbone/status/3 ... 8453437440


so, someone whant a portal so huge that a gasth can pass?

[PatriotBob]

They were so close with jungles too...
Silly Mojang, don't you know big trees are supposed to be at least 3x3 wide so I can tunnel up the middle to hide the entrance to my tree-top jungle canopy base.

I swear...

Oh but good news, Dinnerbone made portals able to be any size.

so, someone whant a portal so huge that a gasth can pass?

If I though it was likely that BTW was going to see that amount of development to update to that version, I might be afraid of what he would do with that...

[magikeh]

Oh but good news, Dinnerbone made portals able to be any size.

I wonder if this means that i can now make my stargate type portal without needing to be all cheaty in McEdit... :D

[TheGatesofLogic]

This is pretty cool, however it's absolutely worthless. How much time did he spend refactoring that code when he could have been working on things with actual gameplay value? It seems to me that mojang is following a VERY predictable pattern nowadays. They seem to be adding things in a way so that it doesn't alter thew actual game experience WHATSOEVER from what it was in 1.0.0

[SterlingRed]

After a day of refactoring portal code, this is now possible. http://t.co/GtWfYd4x02

so, someone whant a portal so huge that a gasth can pass?

Oh god. I cannot imagine the mess in vertical portal alignment mismatching portal sizes would cause. I also wonder if entering / exiting a giant portal places you vertically relative to where you entered rather than always dumping you at the bottom of the frames location. Ie if I built I giant over world portal, could I have platforms for different entry points that would link to different nether portals based on vertical location or would it always use the players location as the bottom of the giant portal frame?
Either way, this is a rather pointless addition.

[Foxy Boxes]

Another question is how does it work with the different ceiling sizes in the nether and overworld? If I build a portal in the overworld bigger than can fit in the nether (and somehow not lag out MC), what happens on the other end?

[magikeh]

Quite honestly i think the question of how when you enter a portal and how it makes you exit can be explained by existing VMC mechanics, if you create a portal, then place a block beside the portal part then stand halfway on the block and half in the portal (so your position is raised when the portal sucks you into the nether/overworld) it will place you at the bottom of the other side of the portal. Thus its my thinking that we cannot use super tall portals as cross dimensional elevators. And as for the fact of creating a portal that is say 3*3 then walking through it, I would very well expect to find a regular VMC portal on the other side, it would seem that this new mechanic is nothing more than an aesthetic addition and so some of the functionality of previous portal mechanics will be the same.... again all my thinking nothing just stated is actually confirmed with the new nether portal mechanics.

[Gunnerman21]

So now portals can probably also be made smaller, which means the minimum amount of obsidian needed is no longer 10 but 6, cutting the time spent in caves mining the obsidian in half... Idk about anyone else but I really hate this...

[JakeZKAM]

Smaller portals bother me very much, but huge portals well... If they could be as exploitable as people seem to think then ya no but the idea of huge/configurable portals sizes (so long as there's a minimum) seems pretty awesome aesthetically.

[FlowerChild]

So now portals can probably also be made smaller, which means the minimum amount of obsidian needed is no longer 10 but 6, cutting the time spent in caves mining the obsidian in half... Idk about anyone else but I really hate this...

You say that as if there's like any balance in the progression of vanilla :P

It's funny too, as this started a couple of days ago with Dinnerbone tweeting about how he wanted people to be able to build portals of an odd width as it was a feature people requested a lot (sigh).

My immediate thought upon seeing that was "well...just let them be built horizontally as well as vertically". Instead, he goes off on a big development tangent for arbitrary sized portals probably wasting a ton of development time in the process and likely creating bugs that they'll be resolving for months to come.

<big thumbs up>

[FlowerChild]

Doesn't look like smaller portals are possible. From Dinnerbone's twitter:

Rectangular, no, anywhere from 4x5 to 23x23

[Sarudak]

If they were going to do something like this then I would much prefer them allowing portals of any shape in an obsidian frame as opposed to just bigger or smaller rectangles. It's kinda cool from a aesthetic perspective. I don't think this is a bad thing. Maybe a waste of dev time considering all the design issues vanilla has but I have a feeling any attempt they made on that end would have a worse outcome.

[FlowerChild]

If they were going to do something like this then I would much prefer them allowing portals of any shape in an obsidian frame as opposed to just bigger or smaller rectangles. It's kinda cool from a aesthetic perspective. I don't think this is a bad thing. Maybe a waste of dev time considering all the design issues vanilla has but I have a feeling any attempt they made on that end would have a worse outcome.

Yup, it's fine and all, it's just largely irrelevant. He mentions at some point in his tweets that he saw a related mod once and it was the only time portal "physics" made sense to him.

It's a magical portal to hell for fuck sake. How it functions and what it allows is entirely up in the air and pretty much anything the designer decides will "make sense", so thus you are free to do anything that suits the gameplay you're shooting for, and hopefully will also choose an approach that takes minimal development effort. I felt the same way about when they allowed transport of entities through a portal: caused all kinds of bugs and design holes for absolutely no good reason when Steve being the only creature capable of traveling through them made absolutely no less sense given the magical nature of the whole process to begin with.

Whatever man. It's obvious now that it's all just pure programming wankery as they have absolutely no actual development direction, and no single individual providing an overall guiding vision to where they're going anymore. Show up at work, ask yourself what theoretical programming exercise you feel like working on today, and off you go.

[FlowerChild]

Actually, one thing that does kind of bug me about it from a design perspective is the removal of on of the few remaining building design constraints in vanilla. How many times while playing have you said to yourself "ok, I have to design this room around the dimensions of my portal given the even width?".

I know it's happened many times to me over the past few years, and has thus guided the design process for a room or building. Players will of course reflexively object to having to work within constraints, but I think you guys will all know my philosophy on that. If anything I actively work rather hard to introduce *additional* constraints of that kind into the game to inspire creativity and thought on the part of the player.

The current Mojang devs seem to view any of those kinds of constraints as being somehow detrimental to gameplay, when I consider them to be the gameplay.

[Stormweaver]

We can only hope that somewhere in all the revamping of the portal mechanics he's tidied up the code that links portals so it makes sense without using F3.


...I say hope. We know it hasn't happened, but still.

[FlowerChild]

Hehe...I just got into in on Twitter with Dinnerbone about this portal thing and the general issue of constraints being a big part of what makes MC fun.

https://twitter.com/FlowerChildXL

For those of you that have popcorn on hand :)

[Taleric]

A ton of features recently have most likely been requested by prominent minecraft LPers.

Several times there have been tweets confirming as much. In fact the mindcrack guys are working on their nether hub now and I am sure they were bellyaching about the portal constraints.

Problem with LPers driving the demand for additions is anything new is great regardless of function. Adding gameplay value is largely irrelivent to them as they just need to quickly make videos with stuff that looks neat. Really anything that makes the game anymore difficult only slows their production process so I am sure they would cry.